Welcome 2022 !

            MAGLEV train in Shenzhen 

The mother of all horrid years has come and gone ! So many setbacks with the health of millions of people put at risk and millions dying from an invisible enemy. COVID - 19 has really changed the landscape and thinking or literally billions of people everywhere in the world.

I do not want to repeat the horrors of the past year, with many countries struggling to keep the pandemic at bay. Many lives have been lost, and families broken by this most horrible of diseases.

We have taken multiple jabs and boosters and worn masks, safe distanced, traced together, taken countless Antigen Rapid Tests, Polymerase Chain Reaction tests, limited our going out, dining together in groups is a luxury (0 to 5 to 2 and 0 and back again), quarantined, spaced out and every thing possible to prevent the further spread of this dreaded disease.

I am prepared to wager a small fee (a bottle of wine) that 2022 will finally bring the wretched virus under control what with the MSD and Pfizer antiviral COVID pill, and every vigilant Governments actions against the spread of yet another variant.

Travel will resume, with new and tighter controls. We will pull through again, and the world will resume (fingers, toes and eyebrows crossed) some semblance of normalcy.

The worrying aspect of it all is that the East West trade tariffs or embargoes, China's growth and tensions in the region will exascerbate 1. energy costs 2. shipping costs and delivery times 3. raw material costs  and it will lead to inflation which needs to be reined in.

The rich poor (GINI coefficient) will be stretched even wider. The GIG economy will be here to stay. New ways of doing business through first digitisation, digitalization, content provision and finally education consultancy will be the way forward.

The 4th Industrial Revolution will herald the age of IoT, AI and Cloud forming the 3 major platforms which must not be neglected. Cryptocurrency, NFTS and the like will change our lives irreversibly.

Who wins ? Who gets left behind ? Its all up to us.

Educate, Re Train, Re Learn to catch the next wave.

Its Hobson's choice and it will not be pretty for the 'has beens'.